DotA 2 2017 Recap

Another year, another gala. In the 2017 eSports awards held by the Esports Industry Awards, Amer ” Miracle ” Al-Barqawi won the Best PC Player of the Year Award.

In 2017, we had quite a fun ride in the SEA region as Mineski and TnC Gaming are currently among the top 10 teams in the world. Chai “Mushi” Yee Fung and Fan Bingbing made Mineski a force in the region, along with the rise of the TNC.

What a Year for Newbee

Newbee lost to Team Liquid in the world’s biggest tournament, but they have won many tournaments this year like the ZOTAC Cup Masters Masters, Galaxy Battles, Perfect World Masters of the Year. It’s no exaggeration to say that Newbee is the strongest team that can represent China in the top tier in 2018.

Team Liquid – The Best Team in Competitive DotA

The guys in Team Liquid are the players on fire at the moment. They helped us enjoy The International 7 with spectacular plays. They managed to take home the 9 million dollars that Valve offered to the winning team, from a prize pool that reached a whopping $24 million.

After enjoying the glory and a deserved vacation, the guys from Team Liquid are ready to defend their crown. Being one of the best teams of this season, they have not managed to reduce the points gap between them and Team Secret. However, there are still many tournaments yet to be played.

New Heroes and Ranking System

With Patch 7.07, there were some changes in DotA 2. Among other things, new Heroes Dark Willow and Pangolier were introduced with Dueling Fates.

While Dark Willow plays remotely, Pangolier is especially convincing with his ability to break through the opponent’s armor. Dueling Fates, however, also brought with it another innovation: the ranked system has been redesigned and now works much differently than before.

What are the improvements in ranking and matchmaking and how do they appeal to the players? And the most important question: has the update shaken the balance of the game? Well, the answer to these questions lies in the hands of the DotA 2 community.

DotA 2 Making New Records in 2017

DotA 2 has won again. In addition to distributing the greatest prize in the history of electronic sports ($24,787,916), TI7 has broken the audience record with a 31.47% growth in terms of concurrent viewers in Twitch compared to previous year.

The biggest DotA 2 event of the year managed to break its own record of the simultaneous maximum audience on Twitch. More than 800,000 spectators tuned at the same time, according to the accumulated data of all official channels.

It is a very remarkable growth compared to the previous years. In 2015, there were 555,926 spectators, while in 2016 there was a peak of 626,896 simultaneous spectators. It should be noted that these figures do not include the audience that sees the games from the game client.

Among the reasons why The International attracts more viewers each year, there are speculations:

• The biggest prize in an electronic sports tournament
• Growth of the Twitch audience
• Increase in the community that plays DotA 2
• Evolution of electronic sports
• Better marketing and promotion campaign by Valve
• Increase in the level of pre and post production of the event